


the planets bend between us

by deathsweetqueen



Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2018 [7]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, But Toni does have non-graphic sex with other people, Consensual Underage Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Female Tony Stark, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark Friendship, Jealous James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Possessive James "Rhodey" Rhodes, Rhodey and Toni do not have sex until she is eighteen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-07 15:16:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19212088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathsweetqueen/pseuds/deathsweetqueen
Summary: When Antonia Margaret Stark wakes up on her sixth birthday, it’s to the words:I didn’t get any sleep last night after that fucking lawn mower decided that 7 in the morning would be a perfect time for him to start his day, right outside my room.She runs a thumb over the long string of words, wrapping around her wrist like a thick leather band.She smiles.She’s fourteen when she meets James Rupert Rhodes for the first time.Written for the "more than a partner" square (S3) for the Tony Stark Bingo 2019 and the "soulmate" square for the Iron Husbands Bingo 2019





	the planets bend between us

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Tony Stark Bingo 2019 and the Iron Husbands Bingo 2019.
> 
> Warnings: conversations about underage sex, Rhodey is very principled, Toni has sex with other people while she is underage who are most likely breaking the law, explicit sexual content once Toni is 18, implied/referenced child abuse because Howard Stark.
> 
> The title for this song comes from Snow Patrol's song.

When Antonia Margaret Stark wakes up on her sixth birthday, it’s to the words: _I didn’t get any sleep last night after that fucking lawn mower decided that 7 in the morning would be a perfect time for him to start his day, right outside my room._

She runs a thumb over the long string of words, wrapping around her wrist like a thick leather band.

She smiles.

* * *

She’s fourteen when she meets James Rupert Rhodes for the first time.

She slides into the table beside a handsome, sleeping black boy, snoring quietly into his elbow. The professor promptly drops a hardback textbook onto the table, startling Toni’s seatmate awake, who flushes blotchy pink from hairline to collar at the professor’s unimpressed look.

“Well, Mr Rhodes, if you’ve finished your nap, I’d like to get on with the lesson,” he says, flatly.

Rhodes drops his head when the professor’s unflinching gaze quells him.

“Good,” the professor says, satisfied, and turns to the front of the room, making his way back down the aisle.

Rhodes catches Toni looking at him out of the corner of her eye, and it’s her turn to blush, looking away immediately.

Rhodes leans in. “I didn’t get any sleep last night after that fucking lawn mower decided that 7 in the morning would be a perfect time for him to start his day, right outside my room,” he explains, conspiratorially.

The colour leaches from her face, her nails digging into the edge of the linoleum table, which creaks in protest. Her stomach tumbles restlessly and she tries to catch the alarm, the hope, the fear, the want, cage it behind her teeth, but it spills over like a vat of a wildfire.

Rhodes’ dark eyes widen in concern, and he opens his mouth to say something, but Toni cuts him off.

“Kill the vermin, dude,” she says, shyly, staring at her soulmate through her thick, dark eyelashes.

Rhodes chokes and he jerks on his chair – for one bright moment, Toni fears he’ll actually fall off, before he laughs, helplessly, staring at her like she’s a nymph rising out of a lotus in the water and Toni’s mouth twists into a smile.

“Shit, that’s… uh, that’s interesting,” Rhodes manages to say.

“That’s an understatement,” she murmurs.

He sticks his hand out, all polite, and Toni blinks down at it. “James Rhodes.”

Toni flounders for words, but finally resolves by shaking his hand. “Antonia Stark.”

She bites her lower lip, as if her name is enough to crush the life out of that moment. It is, in different places, in different worlds – people know a Stark and sometimes, they treat her like a monster (she wonders if it’s inheritable, being a monster; she wonders if the sins of the father _must_ pass to the daughter).

She wonders what James Rhodes will think of her, will think of her name – is her name good or terrible for him?

Ty had thought both.

“Stark, like Howard Stark?” James asks, cocking his head.

Toni wrestles with her fear before answering. “Yeah, uh, he’s my dad.”

This, this, this is the moment where everything changes, where James Rhodes goes _huh, you’re so not worth it_ and Toni will die a miserable death of humiliation.

Fuck, no, she’s not dramatic at all.

“Wow, that’s pretty big,” James says, brow knitting together. “Aren’t you like a genius or something? I heard that Howard Stark’s kid like made a circuit board from scratch when she was six or something.”

Toni wrings her fingers together. “I was four, actually,” she corrects, quietly.

“Huh,” James says, lips frowning-thin. “So, wait, that wasn’t… that long ago…” he hedges.

Toni ducks her head to hide her smile. “In other words, you want to know how old I am?” she asks, belligerently.

James grins at her, all white teeth and candour, and for a moment, Toni’s taken aback by how beautiful her soulmate is.

“You got me,” he teases.

“I’m fourteen,” she says, almost defiantly, lifting her chin.

James blinks. “Shit.”

Toni narrows her eyes. “Is that going to be a problem?” she makes a demand of it.

James gives her the faintest hint of a smile, dark eyes solemn.

He doesn’t have an answer for her.

* * *

It turns out, it being a problem is somewhat of an understatement.

James (or Rhodey, as she soon starts to call him) apparently has this great moral dilemma with having a soulmate who’s fourteen years old to his nineteen, much to Toni’s consternation.

In laywoman’s words, it means that Rhodey refuses to touch her.

Oh, he’ll hug her and give her that brotherly, platonic kiss on the forehead, and hell, he even mussed up her hair that one time before he realised that he must never, ever touch her hair without specific written authorisation.

But he doesn’t kiss her, he doesn’t fuck her, he doesn’t touch her in any way that she wants, even when she pouts and leans in and offers.

“You’re fourteen!” he baulks, when she brings it up.

“So?” Toni says, defiantly, crossing his arms over her chest.

“So, it’s illegal,” Rhodey says, slowly.

“And?”

“I’m sorry, do you not understand the word, _illegal_ , or something?” Rhodey demands, voice lilting higher (if they were having any other conversation, Toni would find it comical).

“I do, I just don’t understand its relevance in our situation,” she says, stubbornly.

“Toni, I could go to jail if I touched you,” Rhodey points out.

“Okay, someone would have to press charges, and I can assure you, my dad doesn’t care enough to do that.”

Rhodey scowls at that, as if displeased that her father wouldn’t burn the world to the ground if some arsehole touched his baby girl – _poor thing_ , Toni thinks, ruefully. He doesn’t understand how her world works, and frankly, she’s loathed to teach him.

“That’s not the point, it would be illegal, immoral, just fucking _wrong_ -”

“I’m not a virgin,” Toni offers, wondering if that would change his strange obligation to the law and order and justice ( _ugh_ ).

Rhodey goes rigid with fury, shaking like a vat of wildfire. “That’s not helping,” he says, flatly.

Toni’s brow knits together. “It doesn’t?”

Rhodey eyes her, evenly, silently, before he reaches out and grips Toni’s wrist with a solid, gentle grip. Her sleeve rolls back, revealing the ink of his handwriting on her wrist.

“You know what this means?” he says, his voice cast low.

Her stomach twists. “You’re my soulmate,” she says, breathlessly.

Rhodey’s mouth twists into a smile. “It means you’re _mine_ ,” he says, firmly. “You think I want to hear about some fucker putting his hands on you? I don’t.”

Toni casts down those long, thick, dark eyelashes of hers. “Because you want to put your hands on me instead?” she says, slyly.

Rhodey’s grin is all teeth. He chucks her up the chin, and she scowls. “‘M not that dumb, babe.”

* * *

She’s fifteen when she realises that waiting for Rhodey to get over his antiquated sense of morality and consent doesn’t mean she has to live like a nun.

She drinks like a fish and parties like it’s 1957 and fucks her way through her MIT’s enrolment lists, Rhodey all the while acting as her disapproving bodyguard. A part of her is satisfied, selfish and mean-like, when his eyes follow her as she traipses off upstairs with a boy and a girl on each arm.

He vociferously protests, of course, and in fact, punches a couple of assholes who get a bit handsy with her underage self, and quietly and firmly dissuades girls who think it would be fun to finger her on the couch at a frat party.

She both loves him and hates him for it.

On her sixteenth birthday, after a night out in Cambridge and a number of wine coolers, they stumble back to Rhodey’s dorm room. She tosses her hair and turns back to her, her eyes lazy.

“I’m sixteen now,” she declares.

Rhodey smirks. “I realised.”

“You know what that means, don’t you?” Toni challenges.

“What?”

“It means that if you touch me now, no one can touch you,” she drawls. She takes brave steps forward until she’s standing right in front of him, eyes trailing greedy-hot over his handsome features. “I want you.”

“Toni,” Rhodey sighs.

“You told me the reason why you won’t touch me is because it was illegal. It’s not illegal anymore,” she points out.

“It’s still immoral,” Rhodey says, quietly.

 _It’s immoral to touch your soulmate, or is it immoral to touch me?_ Toni thinks, bitterly.

“How?” she cries out, gripping his jaw. “How? The universe _wants_ this, wants _us_. How could it possibly be immoral?”

“Toni, you’re so young,” Rhodey protests.

Toni immediately scowls, her grief, her longing, drying up in rage in a single moment. “Stop _saying_ that,” she hisses. “I might be younger than you, but I’m not a kid, Rhodey. Don’t treat me like one.”

Rhodey drags a hand over his face. “You don’t understand.”

“Yeah, you’re right, I don’t,” she says, flatly. “I want you, and I think you want me back. I don’t get what the problem is.”

Her stomach twists with fear.

“Unless, the problem is that you don’t want me back,” she offers, her voice thin. “If that’s the problem, I’d rather you just tell me. Don’t play games with me, Rhodey, not you.”

Pain shadows his eyes. “It’s not that.”

“Are you sure?” Toni asks, grimly, folding her arms across her chest.

“Toni,” Rhodey sighs. “Ah, fuck it.”

He surges forward and kisses her, hard and messy and deep, and she moans, clutching at him, his shoulders, his broad arms, warmth curling in her belly.

When Rhodey pulls away, she’s shaking and swaying, the blood hot in her face.

“Don’t fucking think I don’t want you, okay,” he says, gruffly.

Toni fists a hand in his shirt. “You keep denying me,” she says, half-sick with rage and hurt.

“You think I want to?” Rhodey demands. He grips her marked wrist and raises it up in the air. “You think you’re the only one who feels this?”

“Then, what the fuck is your problem?” she demands.

“I’m _twenty-one_!”

“Yeah, and I’m sixteen, and I’ve loved you for years,” Toni spits out. “You’re the one who has some ridiculous moral hang-up here, okay. You sort that out and you come and find me.”

She shoves past him on her way out, breathing sharp and out, before her heart drops like stone into her stomach and she feels like such a fucking idiot.

* * *

She has more sex and drinks more than she ever had, after that.

Rhodey continues to hate that with a vicious passion, judging by the dark looks he sends her when he catches her sneaking off with some frat boy or sorority girl, but he’s made it very clear to her that he has no intention of touching her instead of them, and that doesn’t mean she has to live like a nun for his benefit.

God help her, she’s alive out of spite more than anything else these days.

She’s eighteen when she shoves a half-full bottle of wine into Rhodey’s hands in their dorm room, and demands, “drink”.

Rhodey rolls his eyes.

“Come on,” she cajoles. “Drink, honeybear.”

“You’re so bossy,” he complains, but nonetheless takes a heavy swig of the bottle.

She leans back, satisfied. “Well?”

“It’s good,” he agrees, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

His lower lip gleams with wine and Toni smooths a hand across her thigh, something pulsing down low.

She wonders if she should, if he’ll just shove her away again, what that might do to her pride, her savage, soft heart (she’s made of iron, like her father says she must be, but even she has her limits).

_Fuck it._

She leans forward and licks the wine off his mouth, startling an odd little noise out of her unacknowledged soulmate. When she pulls away, she spots a hot and almost hungry in his dark eyes, and it’s enough to make her crawl over and ease into his lap.

“Toni,” he says, breathlessly, big, deft hands settling on her thin hips. “What…” he clears his throat, licks his lips (she imagines him licking the taste of her off his mouth; her stomach clenches). “What are you doing?”

Toni shrugs. “Taking what we both want,” she says, simply, swaying towards him.

“Toni.”

“Do you want this?” she rushes out, half-terrified. “Tell me now, Rhodey. We can just be friends. I’ll deal.”

She won’t, but she’ll have to.

“Toni,” he says, his fingers tightening, still quiet, still careful.

Heat blooms in her belly.

Her hands feel hot when she settles them on his broad shoulders.

He kisses her, this time, surging forwards, all deep and messy, bending her back.

“Rhodey,” she rasps, flushing blotchy pink.

His hand slides into her hair, a shining tumble of black-brown, all her mother’s gift, and she sighs, his eyes trailing greedy-hot over her eyes, her nose, her mouth, her throat, her tits, her waist, her legs spread over his hips and her cunt.

He wants her.

All she can think is, _why did he wait so long?_

“Come on,” she breathes, standing and pulling him to his feet and tugging him over to the bed.

She lies down first, the dark tumble of her hair spilling out across the sheets and pillows, and he doesn’t hesitate to crawl on top of her. He finds the tendon of his neck and bites down, and she cries out, grappling for his shoulders, rubbing up against him.

He’s not sweet or kind with it; he’s rough, like he’s wanted nothing more than to savage her for years, and Toni understands that hunger, that lust – she’s wanted nothing more herself.

He tears off her clothes, and she tears off his, the beast to match his beast. He rips off her skirt and her underwear and brings her off over and over again with his mouth and his fingers, and she sucks him off until he’s coming onto her tits, before he’s even sliding into her.

When he’s inside her, she sighs, her fingers curling around air, and it feels right, honest, beautiful, everything that soulmates should be, and she’s finally whole.

He thumbs a dark-brown nipple as he fucks her, gaze turning wilful and hot as it tightens under his hand. Her eyes are black beneath her lashes, obscene and wanting, and her mouth is a slack, wet smear against his shoulder, with every dirty little grind of his hips against hers.

She screams when her cunt spasms around him, an ugly, visceral orgasm the likes she’d never had before, her nails leaving half-moons in his skin, as she slumps back against the sheets, blood pounding in her ears.

She pulls him down for a deep, filthy kiss, holding him against her like he’s something precious to her, and he is, and he produces a sound halfway between a whine and a groan when he comes, his voice strained. Her cunt clenches over and over again as he pulses wetly inside her, and he slips thick fingers between their bodies, between her legs where they’re joined to rub her hard little clit, winding her up to another undignified, rattling orgasm, and she finally comes like a seventy-car pileup, left limp and trembling against him, sweat gleaming on her forearms and stomach and throat and beneath her breasts.

He rolls off her with a grunt, throwing his arm over his eyes.

“Shit,” he wheezes.

“Yeah, shit,” Toni agrees, breathlessly, her throat flexing, and thinks, _there’s never been anyone but you for me and anyone for you but me, this proves it._

He turns onto his side, hand curling around the bone of his hip, and kisses her sweetly over the curve of her cheekbone.

“Is that what we’ve been missing?” he asks, his voice a whisper.

“Yeah.”

“God, I’m a fucking moron,” he moans.

Toni laughs, because there’s nothing much else to do, her back arching, and she turns onto her side as well, tangling his hand with his, so he can rest his head beneath the rise of her breasts. Her free hand settles on the back of his skull, where he’s warmest she knows of him.

“It’s okay,” she soothes and nudges her nose against his. “I’m sure we can catch up on all the great, life-affirming sex we’ve been missing out on.”

He pats her hip, weakly. “Get me some Gatorade and we’ll talk about a Round 2.”


End file.
